


Meridian

by beers4fears



Category: Death Stranding (Video Games), Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Also Package Delivery, And Then... PACKAGE DELIVERY If You Know What I’m Talmbout, Because Low-Key I DON’T EITHER, Blood and Injury, Bounty Hunting, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, F/M, Forgive Me Kojima, I Mean Smut (Eventually), Mandalorian x Death Stranding, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Suicide, Smut, The Force, You Don’t Need to Understand Death Stranding, scientific experiments
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:41:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24531721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beers4fears/pseuds/beers4fears
Summary: After the Death Stranding, America collapsed. Millions died in violent explosions, and the sky was darkened with unending, destructive rain.With all of the country’s infrastructure destroyed, it’s up to cargo porters to deliver critical supplies between underground cities and survivalist bunkers. It is dangerous, grueling work, and the Mandalorians - members of a formerly persecuted religious extremist group - are perfect for the job.Din Djarin, however, has a special set of skills and a checkered past to atone for.The mission is simple and familiar: just deliver the quarry.
Relationships: The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	1. Delivery

His cape whipped behind him, snapping in the wind like the wings of the birds above. The flock was frantic - screeching and swooping in formation - headed in the same direction as the Mandalorian porter.

He’d done this before. More times than he could count over the last decade or so.

While the birds let panic consume them, he was calm. Stoic. He took a controlled breath and flipped the switch for the hyperdrive, sending his speeder throttling faster along the rocky terrain. It blurred beneath his feet as smudges of dusty black and verdant green blended together.

A chasm laid ahead. If he wanted to clear it, he’d need the extra speed. He leaned down towards the handlebars and braced his thighs in anticipation of the jump. The chiral fuel meter was depleting rapidly, but his destination wasn’t far off.

He could make it. He always did, after all.

A flash of movement to his right caught his attention. His helmet’s thermal reader made out the shape of a buck - as big as his speeder and terribly spooked - coming straight for him. In the frenzy of his evasive maneuver, the front lip of his vehicle clipped a boulder, sending it spiraling towards the chasm’s ledge.

He leapt from the speeder at the last possible second, tucking and rolling onto the rocky ground, thankful for his full suit of protective beskar armor.

A muted thud resounded to his right. There on the ground laid a fallen bird, caught in the beginning of the relentless timefall rain. Its feathers greyed and withered, shriveling in on themselves as the life drained from the bird’s body.

He needed to get the fuck out of there.

A few yards ahead, his speeder bike teetered on the edge of the ravine - a tangled mess of metal and electronics, sparking and sputtering out wisps of smoke.

“Fuck,” he grunted, his voice barely picked up by the helmet’s internal microphone, as he retrieved the crumpled metal cargo cases off the bike’s rear rack. The timefall rain had already begun eating away at the untreated steel, pitting the surface with quickly spreading spots of orange rust.

He found a recessed cavern along the edge of the valley and took shelter, unlatching and stacking his cargo as a makeshift stool. The Mandalorian sat heavily atop it and rubbed at his shoulders.

He was getting older. Things hurt that didn’t used to hurt. His lower back complained whenever the weather got like this, a dull pressure that uncomfortably squeezed his cartilage and bones against each other.

Wasn’t it funny, how one singular event had the power to change everything? How eventually, after the chaotic aftermath calmed, the world seemed to find equilibrium again? How what was once so foreign became so mundane?

He was - _used to be_ , he still had to remind himself - a hunter. Not born one, not like so many who’d sworn the creed and walked the way of the Mandalore. He had known loss for his entire life, starting with his own parents when he was just a boy. The loss powered him forward.

But this world - this new one - was not a place for warriors, or for those who made a profession of hunting fellow humans. It left no room for destruction, not when there was so little left.

Lightning flashed hot and bright just past the ravine. The resulting thunderclap boomed and echoed in his chest.

He remembered the first explosion.

It had wiped out all of Manhattan. An entire city, nearly two million souls, lost in a flash.

He was thirty then, when that first voidout had blown a tar-filled pit into the earth, thirteen miles across and deep enough that nothing could ever escape from it. He heard the news on the radio, while he was driving his old truck through the sticks in Georgia, completing a bounty. He could still remember how the mud had caked so thick into the tread of the tires, how the rain pelted like bullets against the windshield.

But he didn’t remember a lot about the crash itself. The quarry was cuffed in the backseat, hurling hateful rhetoric about the Mandalorian’s religion at the back of his beskar helmet. He vaguely recalled some insult about not being human beneath the mask, of having to hide his disfigured face because it was so ugly.

He lost control somehow - an easy mistake, in the unrelenting southern rain on that slick back road.

But he didn’t wake up in the totaled truck.

He woke up on the Beach.

_The smooth black rocks were cool on his skin. Were rocks meant to be this comfortable? This easy to sleep on top of?_

_His eyes slivered open, revealing an unspoiled black sand beach. The sky was swirling and grey, spitting a light mist that only seemed to soothe him further. Gentle waves lapped peacefully at the shoreline._

_Salt from the humid air had begun collecting in his hair. It was sticky and stiff._

_Wait._

_Where was his helmet? Where were his clothes? His weapons? The quarry?_

_He sat up to assess his injuries and found that he had none - not even the jagged scar that ripped a shining pink path down his left thigh._

_That indescribable sixth sense he possessed kicked in with fierce intensity. He was being watched. He whipped his head behind him but found nothing._

_With a small exhale, he turned back towards the horizon._

_A woman was there, one who hadn’t been there just seconds before. She wore a gossamer grey dress, its long train and sleeves billowing in the breeze. It looked almost like the wispy clouds that moved in amorphous patterns above them._

_She began walking towards him._

_He scrambled back, suddenly very aware and very ashamed of his nakedness. His hands scrambled instinctively against his hip, reaching for a gun that was not there._

_She stood over him and smiled softly. She looked ethereal, as if her skin had its own source of light._

_“Din,” she said calmingly, extending a delicate hand. “Are you ready to go back?”_

_He looked at her skeptically, still withdrawing away from her. How did she know his name?_

_“Come on,” she encouraged, waving him along._

_He stood, noticing how the joints in his knees didn’t crack and strain with the movement. The woman in the grey dress turned towards the horizon, leading him into the waves._

_He felt a pull, an energy in his chest that drew him further into the depths, carrying his feet forward as the water rose higher and higher. Beneath the surface, tendrils of tar rose up from the ocean floor, connecting the blackened reef to the sloshing roof of the sea._

_The woman was gone by then. A large Pacific whale, the size of a city bus, swam towards him, sounding its mournful call. Streams of golden crystals trailed behind it, stirring in the wake of its waving tail._

_Din was swallowed whole by the ocean beast and came to in the rain, injured and crumpled in the cab of his destroyed truck._

_He was alive. He was in a ditch on the side of the road, but he was alive._

_And the quarry was dead._

The timefall storm was still raging outside the cavern entrance, blowing howling wind and blankets of corrosive rain against the short green grasses and obsidian black rocks. Din never liked rain to begin with, much preferring drier climates that wouldn’t fog up and seep beneath the plates of his armor.

After the voidouts blasted smatterings of city-sized craters across the entire county, it seemed like the rain was omnipresent. Even when it wasn’t raining, the skies had taken on a near-permanent state of overcast gloom, creating a hazy landscape where bright light and dark shadow could never coexist.

Suddenly, the air grew ice cold _._ That telltale creep of goosebumps erupted across his flesh, pulling the skin taut and prickly. His breath tumbled out of the open bottom of his helmet in visible puffs.

They were here. The BTs. They must’ve been attracted by the flickering electrical sparks still popping and buzzing off his speeder.

He couldn’t see them, not when they were floating like this in an open plain. Only sense them.

Sometimes he’d be lucky, encountering them in a tar field or mud pit, where the slick detritus would outline their ghost-like bodies. The first time he saw one like that - visible and covered in tar - he felt nearly frozen in fear and wonder.

It had a face. It looked human. And it was sad in a way that had degraded into vitriol. Its teeth gnashed and nails clawed at him, desperate to drag him under, to have another soul get stuck on the Beach.

That was the beautiful irony, wasn’t it? To have these Beached Things hunting him, the feared and infamous bounty hunter, not realizing that he was a repatriate. That death, and the Beach, could not hold him prisoner. That he could come back from it and live another day.

Din drew his focus inward, paying special attention to the reactions his body naturally produced in the BT’s presence. He closed his eyes and felt for it.

This one was huge. It almost seemed as if multiple souls had fused into one, moving in unison, hungry for destruction. He felt its large feet stomping across the plain, sniffing for human life, listening for the telltale intake of living breath.

It drew closer. The goosebumps travelled higher up his arms, electrifying the hair on the back of his neck. He wrestled down a shiver that threatened to rattle his armor audibly.

He had to be completely silent. He practiced his tactical breathing, a technique passed along in Mandalorian combat training, and shallowed his inhale and exhale to nearly undetectable levels.

 _In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four._ The methodical control of his lungs gave way to an even more heightened sense ability. He could feel the monster looking around, could feel its confusion.

A cold shock ran through his bones. The BT turned towards the mouth of the cave.

Din opened his eyes, watching the rain-soaked soil and gravel outside the cavern’s threshold. He could see it now, the outline of slow, steady footprints where timefall did not touch the blackened earth. He could hear the low, crunching growl that tumbled through the beast’s chest as it breathed. It stalked closer and closer.

He really didn’t want to deal with this, with another fight for his life when his destination was _so close_. Din held his breath, stealthily bringing his gloved hand up underneath the open bottom of his helmet, and clasped it over his mouth and nose.

The creature entered the cave. Din watched its heavy footsteps circle him, inspecting the cave without sight - only its hearing to guide it towards a victim.

He willed his lungs to remain still, to fight the involuntary, ragged quivering that rattled them as that autopilot survival instinct demanded fresh air. It was a struggle, like trying to wrestle a resistant quarry into their restraints.

Eventually, blessedly, the BT turned out of the cave, disappearing back into the sky as the timefall storm dissipated into standard, life-restoring rain.

Din released the tension from his shoulders, dropping it as if it were a too-heavy load. His lungs ached from the effort of holding still for so long.

That was close. Really fucking close. And his bike… goddamnit. He was going to have to finish the journey on foot.

He straightened up, massaging the chill from his bones, and reattached the delivery crates to his cargo harness.

Three miles over rocky, wet terrain… he’d had worse days.

Din stood and tightened the straps on his porter harness. He muscled forward to the Capital City.

\---

The perimeter scanners always made him feel a little uneasy. On one hand, they were a tangible signal of safety, of having reached a dry, secure facility where he could rest until his next delivery. On the other hand, they were programmed to automatically disable his weapons until departure. It felt like losing a limb.

He hated these government jobs. After operating his business in the shadows for so many years, it still felt… _unnatural_ to willingly waltz right in here, plop down a shipment of cargo and collect payment from the very people he had to hide from.

It’s why he didn’t use his real name. It’s why the helmet stayed on, even outside of the timefall it protected him against. It’s why he didn’t work in teams. Offering up too much information was a liability. He didn’t work this fucking hard covering his tracks to get caught now.

The cargo bay was empty. Even the delivery droids were sublevel or out on orders.

Din pressed the button to activate the delivery terminal, prompting the receiving belt to whir to life. The busted up crates - dented from the crash and corroded from timefall - were placed neatly on the conveyor to be logged and routed to their recipients. The order details had told him this was a shipment of medical instruments and samples of a timefall-resistant artificial wood. He chuckled to himself at that one, at how the world’s few remaining scientists were working on genetically engineering _wood_ of all things. It spoke to the desperation people held to see and touch and build with something other than cold, unforgiving metal.

A blue hologram flickered to life in front of him.

“Mando!” Soren greeted. He was a dapper, put-together former soldier, who’d been tapped by the new government - the United Cities of America - to run operations in the Capital. Din had been delivering here for a couple years now, and had gotten to know Soren well enough to be amiable.

Soren wore his signature suit and tie, an old classic style that reminded Din of Hollywood actors from the 1940s.

“You always deliver, my friend,” he said with a warm smile, friendly and inviting even through the fuzziness of the holo. His eyes crinkled at the edges. “Where’s your bike? We’ve got repair materials on standby if you need them.”

Din sighed. “Had a little trouble on the way in. It’s toast.”

Soren hummed and knit his brows together. There was something at play behind his eyes, gears shifting and connecting in motion.

“Tell you what,” he clapped his hands together. “Come on down and take a rest. When you wake up, we’ll talk. I have a… unique job for you.”

Din’s ears twitched beneath his helmet. A unique job? Maybe he could negotiate a higher rate and get a new bike. Delivering on foot wasn’t as easy as it used to be.

He nodded, turning away towards the bay lift in the center of the room. Soren unlocked the weight sensors as Din walked onto the designated circular platform, watching as it lowered down to bring him into the underground infrastructure of the city.

All cities now - and the outlier survivalist colonies - were completely underground to escape the timefall. It ate away at everything. Roads, buildings, railways, comms towers, everything manmade would erode to nothing if left out to the elements.

Just over 40,000 souls lived here at the Capital City, including the President of the UCA.

The receiving hall outside the lift was similarly empty, still, and quiet. Din’s footsteps echoed along the sleek metal walls as he walked the familiar route to a row of private quarters for porters and other traveling tradespeople. All the occupancy indicator lights were shining a steady green.

Nobody home. He’d have his pick of the litter.

Din chose the room furthest from the exit, preferring total undisturbed silence in case any other visitors stopped in for some shut-eye. The room was immaculately clean, with white walls and glass closets for him to hang and decontaminate his suit, armor, and weapons. He slumped heavily onto the firm mattress pad and let sleep take him - helmet and all.


	2. Beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Din’s secrets have been uncovered, and there’s a price to pay for his freedom.

Din Djarin was not a heavy sleeper. Plagued by nightmares and still too programmed for his old life as a hunter, he slept with that proverbial one eye open.

So _this_ \- a dreamless night, where his body laid like dead weight inside his armor - was abnormal.

He bolted awake, gasping back into consciousness as if he’d been drenched in cold water. Instinctively, he reached to remove his helmet, clamoring to get a grounding breath of unencumbered air.

His right arm stopped short of its destination.

While he was sleeping, someone had cuffed him to a railing on the side of the bed. The cuff was made of a sturdy, brushed black metal, with a blue electronic readout that glowed softly in the darkened room. His vitals and the local time scrolled slowly across its screen.

The lights flicked on in the room, disorienting him momentarily. Soren entered with another man in a long, white lab coat. He was bald with round glasses and an equally round belly.

“Sleep well, Mando?” Soren asked, his warm friendliness ever-present and permeating the room.

Din shifted in the bed, yanking at his restrained arm.

“What the fuck is this?” he rasped.

Soren smiled and nodded towards the other man, who undid Din’s cuff, quickly latching it back in on itself like a bracelet. Din twisted his forearm, unhappy with the way the stupid thing clanked against the edge of his gauntlet. He scowled beneath the helmet.

The scientist gave Din a meek half-smile. “It’s a com link of sorts. You’ll need it for your mission.”

Din bristled, shaking out the kinks in his neck and shoulders as he grumpily shuffled off the mattress pad.

“We let you rest as long as we could, but unfortunately things are getting a bit urgent,” Soren continued.

“You said you had a job for me,” Din said.

Soren nodded. “As you know, the UCA has had trouble expanding to the westernmost parts of our continent.”

Din nodded back. “The tar belt.”

“Precisely.”

The scientist pulled up a holographic control panel along the wall, activating a model projector. The overhead lights dimmed as a topographic map of the country appeared in the center of the room. Along the valley just past the Rockies, a massive stripe of pitch black tar bisected the land.

“At our research facility on the belt’s eastern shoreline, our scientists have conducted a series of tests, studying the makeup of the tar itself, in an attempt to find out how it spread,” Soren said. He turned to the scientist. “I’ll allow Dr. Fitch to explain.”

Dr. Fitch looked a little on edge. _Good_ , Din thought. It took a brave man to cuff a Mandalorian while he slept, and Dr. Fitch ought to be reminded of that fact. Din tilted his visor down in that way he knew made people shake in their boots.

Dr. Fitch swallowed.

“Thank you, Director,” he said shyly, using the opportunity to draw his attention towards the animating map instead of the razor sharp intensity of Din’s staredown. He cleared his throat, cutting the silence with its phlegmy rumble. “Our team has been collecting samples, and we’ve discovered that the tar contains the highest ever recorded concentration of chiral matter. There’s never been anything like it.”

The map zoomed in on the tar belt, showing its slow undulating waves roll and crest in the wind.

“The chiralium levels are so high that it’s become a sort of playground for BTs,” Dr. Fitch continued. “The surface is constantly disturbed by raging timefall storms, rendering it impassable on its own… but it’s the BT attacks that are the true challenge.”

The hologram switched to a model of a gigantic floating whale, formed from chiral tar and dripping golden crystals. Din had… seen this before. After the crash, on the Beach. He walked closer to the animation, watching as the image of the whale swam in place.

“We’re seeing all manner of BT apparitions there - whales, ten-story tall men, giant squid… to name a few,” the scientist said, the blue holograms of each type reflecting against the smudged glass of his spectacles.

“We have run a seemingly endless number of simulations, trying to determine how our UCA crews could possibly cross the tar belt and bring the west coast back onboard with our network.” Soren paused and knit his brows together. “They all failed. Spectacularly.”

Din crossed his arms. “So what are you saying? You want me to cross it? Sounds like a suicide mission.”

Soren shook his head. “Mando, normally I’d be the first person to say if anyone could do it, it’s you. But that’s not what we’re asking.”

Dr. Fitch turned off the projector, leaving the space shadowed in dim light. Soren stepped forward, moving to place his hand on Din’s shoulder. He flinched and ducked away, dodging the gesture. Soren softly chuckled.

“Sorry. Almost forgot,” he apologized, raising his hand up as he backpedaled. “We‘re aware of your… special skill set.” A knowing smirk flitted across his lips.

 _Fuck._ This was bad. This was —

“The UCA has been investigating you for some time now,” Soren continued, stalking closer to the Mandalorian porter. “We know your name is Din Djarin, and that your parents were killed in the attacks on Charlotte in 2024. We know you escaped to a Mandalorian covert in rural Virginia. We know you’re either directly or indirectly involved in the murder of at least 16 people on behalf of various clients.”

Din felt as if the air had been sucked out of the room, as if he’d been tossed out into the vacuum of space. His tongue dried inside his mouth.

“So we have a proposition for you, in exchange for your full pardon,” Soren concluded.

Din curled his hand into a tight fist at his side and tilted his visor at the UCA director. His pulse rang loud and violent in his ears.

“We need you to find someone. She’s like you, in a sense,” Soren smiled. “A repatriate with the highest level of DOOMS we’re aware of.”

Din felt his stomach clench as tightly as his fist at that. DOOMS. Shit, how he wished he _didn’t_ suffer from it, and here these clowns were, talking about it like it was some great gift from beyond.

DOOMS was what gave him the ability to sense BTs. It was what also gave him crippling nightmares of annihilation and extinction. His mind knew no peace.

“What’s her level?” he asked, throat scratchy and rough.

“At least seven,” Dr. Fitch interjected.

Din was only a level two.

“She uses the Beach to teleport to different locations. She has the most intimate connection to it I’ve ever seen,” he continued.

“And she’s unwilling to help our cause,” said Soren. “That’s where you come in, Mr. Djarin.”

The cuff on Din’s wrist beeped and shone a blinking blue. He stared at it as it processed an incoming data transfer.

“We need you to find her. And we need you to bring her to us. She’s our only hope for crossing the tar belt and completing our vision of a reunited America.”

Din exhaled, shaking his head.

“So it’s a hunt? For a girl who can’t be caught?” he pushed, letting the frustration and bewilderment in his voice ring clear through the vocal modulator.

Soren grinned, wide and hungry. Dr. Fitch turned the lights back on in the room.

“The details are being sent to your cuffs. Don’t remove them. It’s how we’ll guide you through the mission,” he explained, heading towards the door. Dr. Fitch moved to follow, all too eager to leave Din’s temporary quarters.

“What’s her name?” he asked at their backs.

Soren paused, throwing Din a look over his shoulder.

“Meridian.”

———

The shower was good. It had been a really long time. Days maybe, since he bathed, but far longer than that since he had access to hot water.

It was a decent consolation at this point, helping to wash the confusion and anger out of his pores, to focus his thoughts.

His cufflink stayed on in the spray, fogging up in the billowing steam. The warrior in him squirmed at the thought of rolling over and accepting this punishment _,_ this bizarre favor he had to do to keep on keeping on in this strange world.

He sighed. Was he an idiot for taking on these government contracts all along? Maybe this was an opportunity, now that the air had cleared, now that the fledgling powers attempting to rebuild America had learned about his checkered past. Maybe he could finally make something of his life.

He never killed anybody that didn’t deserve it. Not by his own hand, anyway. What those clients did with their quarries after they rendered payment was not Din’s concern.

He sighed again. He had grown so old and so tired. He’d be embarrassed of himself now, if the young, cocky version of him could’ve taken a peek into the future. His back cracked as he slowly twisted in the shower spray. He remembered when he used to be one of the most feared figures in the underground, how the sight of the helmet alone would strike terror in the scum and villainy of the mobs that controlled more of the world than any regular civilian could imagine.

He laughed bitterly to himself. Here he was, doing the UCA’s bitch work. The feds. _The fucking feds._

He relented, biting down the sour taste coating his tongue, and tapped the cufflink’s holodisplay to life.

Did he have much of a choice? No. Not if he wanted to live as a free man.

Meridian.

There wasn’t a lot in this briefing document that he could use. Last known location was a couple hundred miles north of the metro Miami voidout crater, near the coast of Florida. Why anyone would willingly go near that suffocating swamp was beyond him. He scrolled more. Thirty one years old, widowed, no children, no prior arrests or criminal record. No known living relatives. No registered assets in the UCA network. There wasn’t even a clear fucking picture of her face.

She was a blank slate. A person who left no trace. For all intents and purposes, a living ghost. Just like him.

This was going to be impossible.

The cuff suddenly crackled to life with staticky noise.

“Mando — err, uh, Din. Mr. Djarin? Umm... Hey, it’s Dr. Fitch,” the voice stammered. “Listen, there’s a situation in the loading dock and we need your help. Can you come up, please? ASAP? You’ll want to suit up.”

Din shut the water off, activating the turbodryers. His hair fluttered in the cacophonous wind that swirled through the enclosed shower chamber.

He zipped back into his timefall resistant undersuit and armor and replaced his helmet over dry, clean hair. The decontamination closet had done its job, clearing all the lingering timefall-soaked sludge and chiral dust from his layers of protective padding and plating.

When the lift brought him up into the shipping bay, it was a very different scene than the night before. The large roll-up door was sealed, rattling against a battering storm outside. A heavy duty truck was parked inside, with a group of four people standing around the rear. They were whispering in hushed, tense tones.

“What’s going on?” Din asked.

The small group parted, revealing a full body bag laid across the open truck bed. It was stained black and looked damp at the head. The smell hit him almost instantly. Din adjusted the filtration in his helmet to cancel out the thick, decaying stench that burned his nostrils.

“Cleaning crews found him in his office. The body’s been sitting for days,” Soren answered solemnly.

“The rest of the Corpse Disposal team is out assisting crews in Green Valley City after the flooding they’ve had,” a man said. “Necrotization has already begun. We don’t have long.”

Soren motioned towards the stranger.

“This is Kip,” he explained to Din. “He’s the head of our CD team here at Capital City, and stayed behind in case of emergency. We need you to accompany him to the incinerator.”

Kip reached out to shake Din’s hand. He didn’t return it.

“Call me Mando,” Din asserted, before Soren could finish the introduction for him. He crossed his arms as Kip awkwardly returned his hand to his side. Kip stared into the tinted visor with a mix of curiosity and unease - a look Din had seen a thousand times before.

“You’re the Mandalorian porter…” Kip said. “I thought you were a myth.”

“Get going,” Soren interrupted. “The storm will slow your trip, and we don’t have long before risking void-out. Go.”

Kip nodded dutifully and climbed into the truck cab, starting the engine as Din settled into the passenger seat.

“What’s our route?” he asked.

Kip pulled up the navpath on his cuffs - the same pair Din now wore - and showed the hologram to him.

“Gotta make a pass through the ravine,” he said with a small shake of his head. “It’s crawling with BTs, and in this storm…”

He broke off, watching as the garage door rolled up to reveal the timefall-soaked horizon waiting for them just past the secured perimeter.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he continued. “The DOOMS carriers on my team are all out on that assignment in Green Valley.”

Kip started driving, the engine’s rumbling muffled by the metallic thudding of raindrops on the armored vehicle.

“I can only sense them,” Din clarified. “I’m not that special.”

“Well,” Kip sighed, patting an oblong container strapped to his torso. The top two thirds were made up of a sturdy glass, tinted black and totally opaque. The bottom housed an intake and discharge valve, hose attachments, and various indicator lights, all encased in yellow metal. “We’ve got this little guy to help us, too.”

Din grumbled. “Bridge baby?”

“Yep.”

Kip fished a long hose from his suit and inserted it into the bridge baby’s intake valve. With a twist of his wrist, the connection sealed, bridging Kip’s mind with the Beach via the baby’s brain. The opaque glass diffused and revealed the tiny child - premature and still attached to its umbilical cord - floating inside of a glowing yellow fluid. Kip’s face twisted up into a snarl as the initial wave of disorientation hit him.

“You ever used one?” he asked.

Din shook his head. “Fuck no. I suffer enough without a direct link. I thought they suspended that program anyway.”

“No. Just moved on to a new model. Not many of these guys left,” he said, peeking down at the baby.

It rolled around inside the glass, blinking its wide eyes between Kip and Din. He hated the whole concept of bridge babies, of farming stillborn children to use as a tool to connect the mind of the living with the other side. It was unnatural, inhumane, even to someone cold-hearted like him.

“You have any kids?” Kip asked.

Din silenced a scoff. “No.”

“Me neither,” Kip commiserated. “Couldn’t imagine bringing a child into this world. You know what I miss the most?”

Din closed his eyes beneath the helmet, mentally readying himself to be talked to near-death.

“Travel!” he exclaimed, slapping the steering wheel in emphasis. “Highways, trains, airplanes, _shit_ man… every part of it. Back before we needed guys like you to move cargo around. Did you ever get to visit another country? Before the clouds fucked it all up?”

Din shook his head silently.

“God… what I wouldn’t give to see Europe again, Mando. Or whatever’s left of it.”

Din looked up towards the swirling storm. After the Death Stranding, the chiral matter in the air collected into thick clouds, their violent winds too powerful for anything to survive passing through them. Massive jets were ripped apart at the rivets.

“Fuck,” Din muttered beneath his breath.

Kip turned towards him, pulled from his one-sided reverie.

“Rainbow,” he pointed. Arcing up through the misty clouds was a sliver of a rainbow, thin like the edge of a sword. An indicator of a BT swarm. “Can we go around it?”

Kip grunted and looked back through the rear window at the body bag. “No. No time. Body’s about to pop.”

They continued pushing forward, driving straight into the murky edge of the timefall storm. Immediately, what little sunlight filtered through the thick clouds was extinguished. Rain and wind lashed at the sides of the vehicle. A sputtering clunk rattled the passenger cabin.

“Shit,” Kip griped. “Shit. The engine’s failing.”

“You kidding me?”

Kip shook his head, drew his brows together tightly. The truck shuddered to a standstill. Over and over, he tried cranking the ignition, resetting the diagnostics. The truck remained lifeless.

“Fuck,” he muttered, pulling up his suit’s timefall-resistant hood. “We have to bring it on foot, we can’t wait any longer.”

Din was incredulous.

“In the middle of BT territory?! During a storm? Are you fucking high?”

Kip threw open the truck’s door as his oradek scanner activated, its starburst-shaped LED panels spinning like a pinwheel beside his head. Din heard the baby stirring in its glass casing. The opaque covering dissolved with its movement, showing the glowing contents again.

Din looked at the child, floating in fluid and so, so tiny. It was scared. So was he.

“We don’t have a choice,” Kip berated him. “We either go on foot or we void-out the whole valley. Hurry. Up.”

Din exited the truck with a frustrated groan and joined Kip at the bed. The muddy timefall-soaked gravel crunched and splashed beneath his boots. His skin grew ice cold beneath the armor.

“I can feel them,” he said.

Kip grunted, dragging the body down to the end of the tailgate. Din could hear the baby starting to fuss, its breath growing hiccupy and panicked.

“Me too. Kid’s going nuts. You take the back while I slide him out.”

The body bag’s metal suspension frame scraped along the edge of the truck while Din maneuvered the rear corners into his hands. After some shuffling and shifting, the two men began walking along the path, still nearly a mile from the incinerator. Din cursed his dumb fucking luck with every step.

Occasionally, the oradek’s starburst would pivot and pulse in a new direction, indicating nearby BTs. Din had never felt his skin run so ice cold.

“So is it true?” Kip asked over his shoulder. “You Mandalorians never take the armor off?”

Din groaned internally.

“No,” he said, trying to convey a sense of finality in his tone. He didn’t want to be in this situation, and he certainly didn’t want to be forced through the usual interrogation - one he’d gotten since he was a teenager and put on his beskar suit for the first time.

“I mean aside from practicalities of course,” he backpedaled, his words huffed and strained from carrying the awkward weight of the corpse. “Like I can't imagine you wear it in the shower.”

 _Jesus fucking Christ._ Din made a frustrated grunt, unwilling to participate in Kip’s attempt at lightening the mood during this dangerous walk.

“When we get to the incinerator, you can ask me anything you want,” he dismissed. “Focus on the oradek.”

Kip nodded, readjusting the metal frame in his hands.

“Fair enough.”

A strong gust of wind suddenly blew the men sideways, forcing them to lean and struggle against the invisible push. The cot worked against them, picking up the force of the ripping air, threatening to lift them off their feet.

Kip spat a curse, losing his footing in the loose gravel. The oradek started going crazy, spinning faster and faster until the LED panels blurred into a bright yellow circle, illuminating the fat drops of timefall ahead of it. The bridge baby wailed.

“Shut up,” Din whipped a whisper through his vocoder. “Don’t make a fucking sound.”

The men kneeled, resting the cot atop their knees as they waited. Every hair on Din’s body was raised. His shoulders creeped up defensively around his neck, like a frightened animal raising its hackles.

A stomp. And then another.

To his right, he saw the telltale interruption in the timefall, the footprints that seemed to appear from nowhere. They drew nearer, attracted by the decomposing body.

Din drew his eyes from the BTs path back towards the corpse. Black chiral matter - like amorphous secretions of tar - slowly rose in a wafting stream from the blasted hole in the man’s head towards the sky.

He thought of the Beach, of the rivulets of tar he’d seen rising towards the surface.

A screech, just a few yards off now.

The two men looked at each other - Kip’s worry reflecting in Din’s shined visor like a mirror. Din slowly and silently worked his hand up underneath the open bottom of his helmet, covering his nose and mouth. Kip followed the movement, covering his own features to silence their breaths.

The baby stilled, its eyes closed and body calm. It floated in the yellow goo, hairless brow furrowed in concentration, as if meditating.

Another stomp, just an arm’s length away. The oradek slammed to a halt, its yellow lights changing to a glaring red. Din’s lungs shuddered against his ribs as he heard the BT lowly growl. It changed direction and began to stalk around the two men and the corpse, circling the necrotizing body like a predator surveying its cornered prey.

It all happened so quickly - the sudden gust that threw their balance again, the loud shuffle of earth beneath their heavy boots, the clatter of metal against rock.

The roar. The goddamn _roar_ the BT unleashed rattled every one of Din’s bones, vibrating in the space between his body and his beskar.

Kip scrambled backwards, eyes wide and horrified as the swarm of BTs materialized, pulling their mangled undead bodies up from a widening pool of black tar that spilled beneath them.

“RUN!” he shouted, springing back from the metal stretcher and pivoting to break into a sprint.

It was useless. Void-out was inevitable. Running would do nothing to save them unless the BTs somehow disappeared, unless they could fight them off and get far enough away with the dead body.

Din watched in silent horror, awestruck as a tar-dipped BT lunged up from the sludge and grabbed at Kip’s ankles. The man howled as he was dragged to the ground, hitting the tar pool with a sputtering splash. He clawed at the loose gravel, pulling against the BT’s efforts as it tried to drag him deep into the pitch.

Din rushed to Kip’s side and drew his sidearm, firing a spray of chiral rounds into the BT’s head. He grimaced, squeezing the trigger tightly as the BT let out high-pitched, otherworldly, bone-chilling wails. Its grip loosened enough for Kip to escape; he scrambled onto his knees and soothingly patted the bridge baby’s casing. The child was screaming, letting loose a choking stream of ear-splitting cries.

“Come on,” Din shouted, roughly pulling Kip up by the armpit. The man groaned and folded back in on himself as he crumpled to the gravel again.

“Fuck —” he choked, grinding his teeth. “Fuckin’ thing tore into me.”

Across his left ankle, a huge gash was ripped into his timefall suit. Dark red blood flowed from the tear, staining the fabric and spreading wider with each thundering beat of Kip’s heart.

Din had seen this look many times before - the look of shock, of disbelief and yet total understanding, that would spread like spilled ink across the faces of the people he used to hunt. Kip knew this was it for him. No truck, no way to run, nothing.

“Mando,” he said to him, voice wavering and muted in the rain. “You have to go.”

Din grunted. He wasn’t going to make it out of here either, not unless he could hoof it fast enough out of the void-out radius. With two bodies for the BTs to devour, that could be miles. He flexed his fingers, coiling them into tight fists, before releasing the tension with a measured exhale. He flipped his sidearm in his hand and extended the butt out to Kip. He furrowed his brows in confusion.

“Take it,” Din said with a small shake of the gun. “Give ‘em hell.”

Kip reached out with a trembling hand and wrapped his cold, wet fingers around the black handle. When he looked up into Din’s metallic visor, he saw nothing but his own reflection.

“Run.”

Din nodded once. He took off sprinting, discarding his cape a few paces down the rocky pathway to free his movements. His arms and legs pumped like machinery, thrumming with fear and anger. He ran faster and with more intensity than he even knew possible.

Gunshots rang out behind him - sharp stabs of sound in the darkened air, like a drumbeat over the baby’s gasping cries. Even as the sound dimmed behind him, even as the rhythmic in-and-out of his labored breaths echoed inside of his helmet, he heard that crying, and he heard the hungry growling.

He turned back, just for a moment. Just for a single look—

The tar whale, the same as the one from his memories, floated high in the swirling sky. Its tail kicked up, swinging back and arching up tall before slamming down with a wave of golden chiral crystals. It let out a guttural, mournful sound, one that rumbled the ground like an earthquake beneath his feet. Din lost his footing, tucking and rolling into his tumble to the muddy ground.

Flat on his back, ears ringing and eyes trained on the sky, he saw the whale twist up as if breaching, unleashing another skull-piercingly loud cry. Its massive body crested up, suspended in that split-second, breathless moment before freefall.

It was beautiful and tragic.

Until everything went white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are nearing the end of the exposition-type stuff here and venturing into the real meat of this story! So excited to introduce the OFC soon.


	3. The BB

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soren has an offer for Din that might be too good to be true. But before he sets out to hunt his quarry, there is one more weapon Din needs - his own BB unit.

It didn’t make sense. Not this time.

He’d died before. He’d come back. But not like this.

The center of the voidout crater laid a few hundred yards ahead. Some of the larger chunks of blasted rock were still glowing a neon shade of orange, illuminated from within, churned up from a golden slumber beneath the Earth’s crust. The valley had been blasted clean - not a speck of life to be found. Not even a blade of grass.

That part was normal. He looked down, still dumbfounded at the anomaly, at this thing that had never happened before - his nudity.

The fear and shame he would’ve felt, of breaking a sacred tenet of his religion, of showing his _face,_ Lord help him, wasn’t there. Nobody was around; no Creed was broken. Din was the only survivor. Slowly, he drew in a steadying breath and closed his eyes. He tried to remember the Beach. What happened there? He saw the whale breach in the sky and then —

Tentatively, Din ran his hands over his body, feeling for broken bones and any bleeding. Everything was normal. His joints still creaked and complained as always, but they were mobile. Normal. He was fine.

His armor laid scattered across the charred plain, intact but littered with pitted dents and scratches. His underlayers were in worse shape, but not too threadbare to be useless. With a grunt, he pulled himself up off the ground to suit up and recollect his weapons.

Why was he naked? How did it happen? Did his body leave this place - flesh and soul - and get dropped like a rock back to the Earth’s surface? What the fuck was happening?

Din’s UCA cufflink was beeping brokenly in the distance. He brushed black dust from the display, tapping the scratched screen to life. Dr. Fitch’s voice crackled on the other end of the comm.

“Din! Come in,” he stammered. “Are you ok? What’s your status? We saw the voidout all the way from here, I can’t believe —”

“I’m fine,” he gruffed into the receiver. His unfiltered voice was hoarse and rasping from the ordeal, scratching up the sides of his throat like razor blades. “I’m coming back. Kip’s gone. Him and the body. And the BB.”

Dr. Fitch let out a heavy sigh and paused. The undercurrent of static cut out and back on though the communicator.

“Okay,” he acknowledged after a beat. “I’ll have medical ready when you’re back, but while you’re out there, could you—”

Din cut the feed off and scooped his helmet off the ground, securing it in place over his head. The HUD was damaged, fuzzing in and out of focus along the lower third data readout.

With an annoyed, tired humph, he slung his rifle across his back and started the hike back to UCA headquarters.

———

The heavy bay door was only rolled up a quarter of the way when Din saw Soren’s shiny black loafers tapping against the polished concrete. He reset his rifle’s strap across the middle of his chest and rolled his shoulders back into place. His frayed underlayers were cold and damp, chafing him beneath the armor.

Soren was gonna want to talk. But conversation was the last thing Din wanted. He wanted a drink, another shower, a hot meal. He wanted to put himself to bed while he was still tired enough, when the nightmares might not have the legs to catch up with his brain.

“Mando,” he said once the door’s edge passed his groomed, cleft chin. “Thank God you’re alright.”

A sternness was cast across Soren’s eyes, reminding Din of being reprimanded as a child, before he’d joined the Mandalorians. The feeling settled uncomfortably in his stomach. Wordlessly, he trudged past Soren towards the lift, trailing a pattern of charcoal grey chiral dust beneath his boots.

“Ah-ah-ah,” Soren turned and reprimanded. “Not yet. You aren’t disappearing without talking to me first. And definitely not without going to medical.”

Din spun to face him. He tilted his helmet in the hopes of intimidating the man into submission, and rested his palm against the butt of his sidearm.

“No,” he spat. “I’m fine. I want fresh clothes and rest. Then we talk.” Tension crackled between the two men, snapping and angry like lightning. Din’s fingers twitched reflexively against the weapon.

“Alright,” Soren sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. “I’ll send a nurse droid down to your quarters. But I expect you to join me in my conference room at 1900.”

Din’s posture relaxed slightly as he gave the director a small nod. He pivoted on his boot heel towards the lift hatch.

“Don’t be late,” Soren added over Din’s shoulder.

He crossed his arms, furrowing his brow as the hatch lowered to the guest barracks. When it settled into the sublevel floor with a pneumatic hiss, Din looked down at his hands and noticed their trembling, how it felt like his skin was too tight. He shook them to release the tension, tried to wipe the image of the whale from his mind - at least until Soren and his team called him up for their interrogation.

With heavy steps, Din walked down the empty hallway, aiming for the same room he’d used the night before. Each echoing sound of his soles against the polished metal floors amplified the stress in him, ringing in his ears like the gunfire he’d unleashed on the BTs. He felt sick, dizzy, disoriented. Did he have a concussion? Fuck, the floor was swaying beneath him now, rolling like waves of chiral tar.

With a weak grip, he held the private room’s door handle and pushed, tripping over himself into the threshold. He was too dizzy, too ass-backwards and upside down to do anything but kick the door shut behind him and collapse to his hands and knees of the floor. He crawled towards the shower, turning on the spray and slumping against the back wall. Piece by piece, he removed his scratched armor and dirty boots, peeled his tattered layers from his body, and left them off to the side in the stall.

His head fell heavily forward, hanging between his knees. The baby. The fucking bridge baby. He could hear its crying as if it were in the room with him, its ear-splitting wailing that rattled the base of his spine.

The water was black beneath him, swirling in clouded rivulets from his skin to the drain. He crumpled forward, pressed his pounding forehead to the cool tile floor. His back heaved with sobs.

The Beach. He remembered now. He remembered what he saw.

A beacon of streaming energy tore up from the center of the horizon, splitting the sky in two. On one side, the sky was a brilliant shade of blue, filled with white, pure clouds, chirping birds, rays of glimmering golden sunlight. On the other side was darkness - a hurricane of pitch black chiral debris, the wind ripping and howling like the screams of a billion tortured souls.

The sea sucked backwards, exposing everything that laid below - the whales and fish, nets and traps, rocks and coral, all scattered across the wet sand. A woman stood ahead, dressed in a skin-tight black suit. It clung to her body like an oil slick. Her face was covered by a loose hood, draped heavily around her head and shoulders.

He remembered standing up, feeling cold water slide off his bare flesh. He’d never been naked before. Why was he naked? Why was this beach so different? It was the same every time. He knew it like he knew his own face… but this wasn’t familiar. It felt like an inversion, like seeing his reflection flipped in the opposite direction. Like looking at himself through someone else’s eyes. Like he was outside of his own body, in a mind other than his own.

He blinked, felt a rumbling beneath his feet. He looked up and saw the woman mere inches ahead, her face a shadowed mystery. A cresting tsunami roared behind her, suspended above like a predator preparing to strike. The black top of the wave arched high enough to kiss the bottoms of the clouds, intermingling its poisoned mist with their pure whiteness.

Din felt a cold sting against his temple and scrambled backwards, slamming into the back of the shower wall. The nurse droid beeped calmly and replaced the scanner against his head.

Its featureless metal facade reflected his expression back at him - a soulless mirror with his horror staring straight into his eyes.

———

The stainless steel straw plinked against the edge of the heavy-bottomed glass. The room was dimmed, a lighting feature that Soren specifically had installed for his frequent after-hours meetings. Din saw all this - the hospitality, the casual rapport Soren was trying to curate - for what it was... a tactic to get him to open up. He didn’t know what for, but after spending his entire adult life living beneath a mask, lurking in the shadows, he wasn’t about to suddenly trust anyone. Din resolved to stay his usual stoic self, to keep Soren and the rest of the UCA at an arm’s length and not an inch closer.

All he had to do was complete this mission. Deliver this quarry. Anything else was asking too much. The UCA has already learned enough about him, and they didn’t need to learn all of it.

Soren settled heavily into the chair across from Din. The gesture seemed forced, like the man was less exhausted and relaxed than he let on. Din was thankful for the helmet in most situations, especially ones like this. It was unnatural for most people to converse or argue or negotiate with a blank face. That discomfort was always to Din’s advantage in his line of work - or at least, his old line of work, before he became a porter.

“It’s not poison,” Soren joked, swirling the amber liquid. He smirked over the lip of the glass.

“Alcohol is by definition a poison,” Din retorted, crossing his arms in the chair.

Soren chuckled under his breath. “True. But moderation separates boys from men, don’t you think? I’ve certainly learned that lesson from experience.”

Din reached out for the glass and picked it up, sliding the metal straw underneath the open bottom of his helmet. The liquor was smokey on his tongue, settling warm and smooth in his chest as he drank.

“Good, right?” Soren asked. “Bet it’s helping after your eventful day.”

Din grumbled and took another sip. The tension in his shoulders slowly began to melt, unraveling the rigid knots along the back of his neck. It _was_ good shit.

“What do you want?” he gruffed, setting the glass back down.

Soren flashed his white, straight teeth and shrugged nonchalantly. “You’ve been running orders for us for a while now. I hardly know anything about you.”

“You learned enough from your little investigation,” Din huffed. “I’m not here to be your friend, Soren. You cut me a deal. I intend to deliver my end of it. Anything else is a waste of my time.”

Soren’s eyebrows raised up, crinkling the skin along his forehead. He refreshed both of their glasses from a sleek crystal decanter.

“What’s your end goal, Djarin?” he asked, settling back in his chair. “After you bring us the woman. What do you want with your life?”

The silence that fell between them was thick and uncomfortable, like trying to breathe through water-logged wool. Din felt anxiety rise in his throat.

“I just want to disappear,” he said quietly. “I want quiet.”

Soren exhaled slowly and nodded his head solemnly. His eyes were perfectly trained on Din’s through the visor’s glass - a feat few were capable of, and one no one knew if they’d accomplished.

“What if I told you I could grant that wish?”

Din scoffed and moved to get up from the table. Fuck this. He already told Soren he wasn’t agreeing to anything else. The bounty was enough. He’d figure his future out from there.

“Not everyone is out to trick you, Mandalorian,” Soren asserted, sliding his hand across the table to stop him. Din paused, hovering just over his chair. “You’re the best porter out there. I’d be a fool not to tap into that talent.”

Din tipped the helmet downwards, narrowing his stare. “What do you want?”

“The UCA, and all of its incorporated colonies, need a lot of help to rebuild and repopulate. We’ve developed a communications network of sorts - a way for scattered settlements to share data and request resources. The list is long of what they need… medication, building materials, agricultural equipment,” he explained. Din still hesitated. “Please,” Soren urged, “sit.”

Din lowered back into the chair and spread his arms across the armrests. He roughly grabbed the glass and took another large gulp of amber liquid through the straw.

“There are roads to be built. Bridges, tunnels, farms... Some of it is already underway, but some settlements are so hard to access - so spread out - that they’re behind schedule. Since I already know you’ll be searching far and wide for our target, I’d like to entrust you with some of these critical deliveries,” he nodded diplomatically. “It will help our country become whole again, completing our vision for a new America. We can start to feel normal - like the way we used to be,” he emphasized, his eyes growing wide and glassy with emotion. “It’s important to us. And if you agree to complete this extra work, we will compensate you handsomely.”

“How?”

“With whatever resources you need to build your own compound. You want solitude? You’ll get it. Just tell us where and what specifications.”

“And you’ll leave me be?”

Soren nodded and took another sip of his drink. He cleared his throat, set the glass back on the polished tabletop. “We’ll leave you be,” he promised. “Din… you’re the only one who can do this.”

Din flexed his fingers in his gloves. His own shelter, built to his own requirements, wherever he wanted… it was a dream. Something he never thought he’d have on a porter’s pay and schedule. He could live out his days peacefully, far away from other people and their suffocating problems. Far from their judgements.

“Okay,” Din sighed, looking down at his lap. “Okay… I’ll do it.”

Soren grinned, wide and sharp. “Good,” he said, before draining the remainder of his drink in one large gulp. “Dr. Fitch will get you fitted for a BB unit.”

Din snapped his eyes back to Soren. “No. I don’t want one.”

“After that mess in the valley, you’ve proven you need one.”

Din stayed perfectly still, trying not to recoil at the criticism.

“Relax. You’re getting the newest model. The research team has been hard at work since you first started delivering for us,” Soren continued. “Things have changed. You’ll have a cleaner experience.”

“I don’t want a cleaner experience,” Din sparred. “That program is — it’s not right.”

Soren shrugged. “You’re free to have your opinion. But we can’t risk another voidout,” he chided. His brow set back into that firm line across his forehead. “You were lucky this one triggered in an uninhabited area. It makes your errors easier to overlook.”

Din was seething now.

“Overlook?!” he rose from the chair with an aggressive huff. “Your own employee died. And a goddamned baby. You farm them. You rip them from the womb, half-formed, and curse them with this—” he sputtered, twisting his hands into fists, “—this _disease_. And then their deaths are overlooked? Blown to bits in a voidout or thrown in an incinerator when they outgrow their fucking tanks? _Fuck_ you.”

Soren’s smirk oozed up the side of his face, like blood seeping from a fresh wound.

“Awful lot of respect for human life coming from a former bounty hunter, no?” he jabbed, rising from his own seat to place his whiskey glass on the sideboard. “You’re dismissed. See Dr. Fitch before you depart for a briefing.”

———

In the morning, Din was feeling calmer, despite the uncomfortable tightness in his shoulders at the thought of being assigned a BB. Aside from his feelings about the program itself, he didn’t want that kind of link to the other world. He was tied to it enough in his dreams.

Soren’s jab about human life still rattled around at the back of his mind. Din was no angel. He had done horrible things as a bounty hunter. But he never, ever hurt a child. He couldn’t. Not after what was done to him.

After packing up his personal items, he dressed in a fresh set of underlayers and a brand new chiralium-resistant duraweave suit. He looked good. He would’ve looked better if his armor wasn’t so damaged from the voidout in the valley.

Dr. Fitch was characteristically nervous as he led Din through rows of temperature controlled storage that held the UCA’s many test specimens. Grasses, dirt, water from various streams and lakes, fish swimming in gently bubbling tanks - all here to be studied. At the end of the hall, the scientist scanned his credentials at an armored door.

“Listen, Din,” he said meekly. “Before we hook up your BB… I want you to know that what you’re going to see is still experimental.”

Din nodded once, letting his apprehension hide itself beneath his helmet. The door slid open to reveal a small room with a metal workbench on one end and an array of scanners, scales, and other measuring devices on the other. Atop the workbench was a standard BB casing, resting in its default sleep mode with the glass an opaque charcoal grey. Dr. Fitch rapped a knuckle against the glass, transitioning the case’s opacity down to be fully transparent.

Inside, floating in the standard golden-orange fluid, was… _something._ It wasn’t human - it couldn’t be - but it was tiny and wrinkled like a newborn. The first thing Din noticed were the ears. They were huge, set on the far points of the creature’s broad, stout head. As large and cartoonish as the ears were the BB’s eyes - deep brown with oversized black pupils. They blinked curiously up at the two men.

“What is it?” Din asked. He couldn’t take his eyes off of it. It chittered a little greeting his way - some impossibly adorable sound from its tiny mouth, set below an even tinier nose.

“It’s a mutated clone of a human BB,” Dr. Fitch answered with a proud smile. “We’ve been experimenting with introducing different plant and animal DNA into the genome… our attempt at creating an even stronger link with the Beach, so that we can one day understand it.”

“It’s human?!”

Dr. Fitch shrugged and shook his head semi-uncertainly. “It’s not human, not by any scientific definitions. It is uniquely our creation. And — it has a _very_ strong connection to the other side.”

Din tilted his head at the baby, watching its three-fingered, clawed hands play with the swirling bubbles in the tank. An odd memory weaved its way into his thoughts for the briefest of moments. He remembered being a boy, before the attacks, and visiting the zoo with his mother. There was a tank there that held “walking” fish - a species that could swim out of their lakes and waddle across land. He spent the next several months reading everything he could about them, and how their discovery told scientists part of the story of life’s evolution out the primordial soup.

“You’ll also be happy to know there was no human host for this one. No womb. All petri dish,” Dr. Fitch said, digging in the cabinet for a BB carrying harness. Soren must’ve passed along his criticism from last night. “Let’s get you fitted.”

As nylon straps were pulled and tightened over his body, Din and the BB stared at each other with deep curiosity. He bitterly chuckled to himself at the irony of two anomalies - a supernatural mutant child and a staunch Mandalorian mercenary - about to be literally tethered to each other to try and save America. The Saturday morning cartoons of his youth were less bizarre and more believable than this.

**Author's Note:**

> One night I was laying quietly in bed, BOLTED upright, shouted, “The Mandalorian but make it Death Stranding,” and terrified my husband.
> 
> And then I wrote this.


End file.
